The Best Way To Make Or Break A Habit

Issue. So we're going to talk about, you know, daily habits. Are they hindering your chances for success? First and foremost, you know, what is a habit? What is a habit? A lot of people know that they have habits, right? But what is a habit? You know, if we're talking about the brain, where are habits is a habit. Here is a habit, here is a habit, down here. Where are habits in the brain? You know, many years ago I heard a saying that says, you know, first you create your habits, then habits create you. And I also learned that there are constructive habits, there are destructive habits, there are empowering habits, there are disempowering habits. But here is the key to really understand. And again, everything we talk about at Neurogym and that I teach has to do with what have we learned about, you know, habits, the brain, etc. And so if you understand the hierarchy of how the brain operates, we know that it functions and a lot of the energies used for safety first, right? Emotional safety, mental safety, financial safety, physical safety, etc. But the second most important part of the brain is energy conservation. And that actually is because it's geared towards safety first. So a lot of the neural networks in the brain are geared towards being efficient, just in case there's some danger. So if you understand what created this habit process, when you and I consciously make a decision, you know, let's do X or let's do Y, that takes a lot of mental capacity and physical energy in a lot of cases. And so the way our, our brains evolve, many of you know, right, we had the instinctual or lizard part of the brain, then part above the. If you look at the brain, there's something called a triune brain. So there's the brain stem, the instinctual part of the brain. Then the mammalian brain grew next. And then on top of that, the neocortex, the genius part of the brain, developed over the last 35,000 50,000 years. Now, why am I telling you this? I'm telling you this because in order to conserve energy, our brain became brilliant at developing habits. Why? A habit is a non conscious process that is a combination of your thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations and behaviors that have been automated to go from conscious effort to subconscious processing and behavior. And this is why habits are hard to break. It's because the neural networks that formulate your habits are deeply ingrained in the subconscious level. And there's an area called the striatum, which is where the seat, shall we say, of your habits reside. So when you think about why is it so hard to give up a habit, whether it's a smoking habit, any type of habit. Why is it so hard? It's because when you try to break a habit consciously, without a process, you're working against your neuroanatomy. Does that make sense? If that makes sense, give me a like or a love. I'm fascinated with understanding the mechanics of the brain. And so when we have a habit, there's also something called habit loop. Has anybody heard of the habit loop? Have you heard of the habit loop? The habit loop. And many of you know, in the last, you know, let's say 15, 20 years, we now have FMRI scanning machines, functional magnetic resonance imaging technology, SPECT scans, single proton emissions topography, computated topography is a SPECT scan. We're now able to finally look a little bit deeper into the human brain, a live one instead of a cadaver. And so when we think of a habit, a habit is for efficiencies I mentioned before. But what are the components of a habit? Can anybody give me a best guess of what are the three components of a habit? It's called the habit loop. A guy by the name of Charles Duhigg wrote a great book many years ago called the Habit Factor. I think, but some really, really good research on habits I'm going to show you. I'm looking at your comments right now. The habit loop, Corey, it's not a feedback loop, it's a habit loop. And what are the, what are the components of a habit? First and foremost, let me share with you. We talked about the science of habits. By the way, if you're enjoying this and like this, and think people need to know a little bit more about their daily habits and how some habits are constructive and help you achieve your goals. Some habits are destructive and move you away from your goals. The first part of a habit is a trigger. So something triggers the habit to go into motion. Alright, so what are some of the triggers that could activate a habit? Right, so for example, how many of you wake up in the morning and you go to the bathroom and then the first thing you do is you go and get your coffee, Right? So what triggered you going to the coffee machine? How many of you get home and have a habit? How many of you get to the office and have a habit? Everything that we do, 95% of what we do is really based on habit loops that are created. So there's something that triggers a habit. It could be a sound, a smell, a person, a location, a song. It could be anything that triggers that Habit loop. So there's a habit, there's a behavior that the habit instigates. Right. And then there is the reward. So the habit loop is trigger, behavior, reward. And our brain, as many of you already know, moves away from pain and moves towards pleasure. So a lot of our habit loops are moving us away from pain and moving us towards pleasure. All day long. We seek pleasure, we seek to avoid pain. And so what do you think is the most important part? I'm looking at your comments, by the way, for those of you who are leaving it. Those of you are liking and loving. I see that and I like that. So what do you think is the most important part of understanding this habit loop? The trigger, the behavior, or the reward? What do you think is the most important if you want to interrupt a negative or disempowering habit? Okay. Or what do you think is the most important part if you want to create a new habit? Let's talk about the science of habits. If you're enjoying this, share it if you can on social media. That would be great. Let me say hello to my friend Yankee Ted Carolis, old high school friend of mine from Montreal, Canada. Hey there, Yankee. So how do you, how do you focus on these habits? How do you focus on these habits? What's most important? Is it the trigger, the behavior, or the reward? And I'm looking at some of your comments here on social media. Don't you just love social media? All right, so how do you break the pattern of a disempowering habit? First and foremost, I want to give you a, a little bit of insight into habits. You're not going to be able to interrupt the triggers too many times. Yes, you can change your environment if you know that there's an environment that triggers you. For example, for somebody who might be a drug addict or an alcoholic, one of their triggers might be certain friends. One of their triggers might be, you know, certain locations or people, etc. So what you want to be focusing on is if you can eliminate the trigger, that's great. However, all of the latest scientific research shows that what you want to be focusing on is altering the behavior just enough in order to interrupt that pattern. So one of the things that I do with all of my, with two of my children, my clients and friends is write down on a sheet of paper. You want a little inner size. I want you to write down on a sheet of paper a habit, and you can do this. Let's talk about letting go of disempowering habits or destructive habits. Okay, let's talk about that first. First, as opposed to how do you create a new habit, which I'll talk about in just a moment. So let's say you have a disempowering habit. Biting your nails, spending too much money, overeating, whatever the disempowering habit is, that's become automatic. You want to write down on a sheet of paper, write down the habit number one. Here is the habit that is disempowering me to whatever extent or degree. I want you to write out a list of when is that habit triggered? Okay? Is it when you come home from work? Is it after you have dinner and you sit your butt on the couch and you watch too much tv or you eat things that you shouldn't eat? Is a habit of smoking usually triggered by coffee or alcohol. So write down the habit you want to release. Write down the two or three or four or five things that trigger it. People, places, thoughts, emotions. Whatever the case, this is what triggers the habit. So you're aware of the trigger. Write down what is the behavior? And then write down as well. Here is the reward I'm getting. I'm relaxed, I'm less stressed. It helps me deal with my anxiety. It feels good. Whatever the reward is, remember the reward. Whenever you're behaving, you're releasing that dopamine in the brain, right? So you're releasing that dopamine in the brain. And what we know about habits and neurochemistry is it's actually not the behavior that releases the dopamine, it's the anticipation, right? It's the anticipation. It's the mental and emotional anticipation that actually starts to release the dopamine. So here's what you do. You have your triggers. The first thing that you want to look at is how can I eliminate one or two or three of the triggers? If you can, how do I eliminate those triggers? So if it's a certain type of food, like sweets that I used to be addicted to, just get rid of all of the sweets from your environment, all right? And by the way, the latest research suggests it takes about 66 days to 365 days to develop a new habitual pattern. Not 21 days like we used to think. Not 7 days, not 35 days. Between 66 and 365 days. You didn't develop your habits in 3 or 4 or 5 days, and you're not going to develop new ones in three or four or five days. So you itemize the triggers, see how many you can get out of Your environment, if possible. Then you look at the behavior. So when my trigger is activated, here's what I do. Okay? You list out the behavior and then you ask of a question. What can I replace the behavior with that is more empowering, constructive, inspiring me? What can I replace the behavior with? And here is the key for the next 100 days, small little shifts in the behavior. It does not have to be a big shift. All you're looking for is a deviation, an interruption in the behavior for 100 days. Not if you're thinking short term around habits. Your chances are. Let me just be real. Chances are you're not going to succeed. And so if you focus on eliminating the triggers, if you focus on altering the behavior ever so slightly and you still get the reward because you're the deliberately, constantly choosing something more empowering, constructive, inspiring you that's lifting you up, then guess what? You're going to get the reward of taking that action. Now, it's going to be uncomfortable for about 30 days. 30 days. So who can help you? Do you need a partner who also wants to release a disempowering habit? And how do you keep yourself motivated? Right? You have to have a motive for the action. So once you know the trigger, the emotion and the reward that you're getting, then you ask yourself, what is my motivation? Okay, for doing this? What are all the things? List out all of the things that you are going to benefit from changing this habit. A disempowering one. Does this make sense so far? Looking at your notes, looking at your comments. Leave me a comment if you're enjoying this, right? So that is called the habit loop, right? It's a trigger, the behavior, the reward. You focus on altering the behavior. And here's the other thing to keep in mind. Don't focus on changing three or four or five behaviors at a time. Focus on one and putting your energy and attention on one. Okay, let me give you a couple little games that I, that I play with myself and I'll share with you a just some real life stuff. So because I, you know, do a lot of research on, on the brain, I'm fascinated with mastering this tool that you and I own. It's the most powerful tool in the known universe, our brain, right? And so I play tricks with myself. So let me give you an example of a trick that I'll play with myself. And we had a lot of our clients do this as well, just to get you into the awareness of how many habits we have and how they rule our lives. So let Me give you a couple little things that you could do for fun. You know your toilet roll at home that you use in the bathroom? Some people have the toilet roll where the paper is, you know, up, going down. And some people have the toilet paper where the roll is going from top to bottom just for a little bit of fun. Okay, do you like your toilet roll paper top to bottom or underneath the other way? There's only two ways you could have it or two ways that you unroll it, even if it's not on the little toilet. Which one do you prefer? Let's have a little bit of fun, right? I'll tell you why I'm asking you this. There's a reason to my little madness right here, right now. Okay, so come on, tell me, do you like the toilet paper on top or on the bottom? Which way? I'm trying to follow all of the. Okay, so top to bottom, top to bottom, top to bottom, top to bottom. I've got a couple of screens here, so I'm looking at a couple different screens. So a lot of top to bottoms. Here's what I want you to do. When you go home today, or if you're at home, flip your toilet paper roll from top to bottom to bottom to top. And here's the key. I want you to just get good at being aware of how much resistance you are going to have to even do something as simple as that. Because it's been a habit for many of you for 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years. And some of you are already going, I don't want to do that. That's a silly, stupid exercise. And I challenge you to understand that, that resistance, that negative self talk, that is how powerful the habit already is. Then for those of you who say, okay, I'm game, I'll take on the challenge, John, 100 days, keep the toilet paper going in the other direction. All right? And here's what I want you to do. Pay attention to how much negative self talk or how many rationalizations you come up with, which is rational lies of. Okay, I've done it for three days. I've done it for five days. I don't want to do this anymore. I get the point. See if you can just change your habit of which way the toilet paper comes off your roll in your house. That's one little thing that you can start to play with so you understand the trigger, the behavior, the reward, and see the mental resistance. Because when you get good at being aware of the mental and emotional resistance to change, you start to master change. Here's another one. January 7th of this year, I decided to level up the game a little bit. And so what I did, I, I am, I'll be 58 this year. I have been brushing my teeth on my own for, let's say, I don't know, 56 years. If you do 56 times, 365 days, times two times a day at least. I have been brushing my teeth with my right hand for that many years and so have you, right? On January 7th, I said, okay, let's have a little bit of fun. I'm going to change the way I brush my teeth from right hand to left hand. I'm going to put the toothpaste on with the opposite hand and I'm going to do everything that I normally do in front of the mirror to brush my teeth with the opposite hand. It just about drove me nuts after the first seven days because I was consciously picking it up the same way and then switching hands. Switching hands, switching hands, switching hands until about three weeks and then I started to feel a little bit more comfortable with it. And now almost 100 days later, I'm not even thinking about should I brush my teeth with my right hand or left hand. I was standing there with my toothbrush with this hand, basically like this, trying to brush it with my electronic toothbrush. You know, for 30 days. I felt totally, totally out of whack. And so why would you want to do that? Why? Because you want to start learning more about having more mental and emotional control where you learn how to override automatic processes, okay, that aren't serving you. If it's true, and it is, that this is the most powerful tool tool in the known universe. If you want to know more about how to inner size your brain, better pick up my best selling book Inner Size on Amazon. But that's a shameless little plug. If you want to understand how to use your brain better and how to let go of disempowering habits and how to start disempowering habits. You have to get into the habits of emotions, the habits of mindset and understanding that rules the day. And so when you start to play with altering habits on demand, you're now in control of your brain versus it operating based on how you were conditioned for 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years. That's one. I got a few more minutes I want to share with you on how do you develop a new habit? Right. So how do you develop a new habit? And hold on, I just saw a name here. I saw my buddy Eric Swanson. On here. Hey, buddy. Hope you're doing great. So how do you develop a new habit? If habits are hard to break, they're also actually hard to make. They're actually hard to make. So what have we learned about a habit? Well, we've learned that when we are in the imprinting or modeling years, when you and I are born, right? If you think about this structure called your brain, there's about a hundred billion brain cells. And I like to visualize those as a hundred billion marbles. Marbles. And some of those marbles are connected like highway systems, right? So our sense of smell, highway system is connected. Our sight, our sound, hear, see, smell, taste and touch. There are neural networks already built in place as a part of our genetic predisposition and the way that our brain develops. And ask yourself this question. What habit is a baby born with? What habit? What habit is a baby born with? And the answer is no habits. There's some predispositions, right? To sucking for food survival, right? But if you think about, you know, those marbles aren't connected. Those brain cells aren't connected. But over time, through. Through watching, hearing, experiencing, seeing, etc. We develop these neural connections. And the ones that are reinforced and repeated over and over and over and over again become habits and fixed in the subconscious conscious mind. But because of the science of neuroplasticity, we know that just because they are like a highway system doesn't mean we can't renovate the highway and create new roads. Right? Instead of new road. N E U R O D E New road. New roads. And so the question is, if a habit is a neural network that's been reinforced, patterns, okay, that operate automatically, how do you create a new habit to override an old habit? Well, first and foremost, you never, ever, ever, ever, ever get rid of habits. Habits, once they are formulated in the brain, is a neural network, okay, that operates automatically based on these triggers, these cues. Now, if you think about this, if you stop firing because you've interrupted a pattern, you stop firing the habitual pattern long enough, 100 days to start, then that pattern basically deactivates, becomes more dormant. It's still there. It becomes dormant. But if you start a new pattern and you start activating that pattern, you reinforce that pattern, your brain says, okay, I guess you don't want me to activate this pattern. You want me to activate this pattern. I'm going to start reinforcing this pattern. Now, as soon as you stop the new pattern, you are screwed. Because the old pattern, because it's been there for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. It just reactivates. And that's why a lot of people that break a habit for a week or two or three or four on a diet or because they want to make more money, because they want to change their relationship, they don't do it long enough to deactivate the old pattern and create and reinforce the new pattern for it to become the default new pattern. So how do you create a new pattern? How do you create a new pattern? Tiny little behaviors. So a lot of people say, I'm gonna go all in and I'm gonna do everything it takes. Yeah, you can do that for a day, a week, three weeks, four weeks. But your old subconscious patterns, they're going to kick your ass araf. They're going to kick your ass back into compliance. So here's what you want to do. Somebody type this in. Write this down. When you're developing new habits, I want you to develop small, repeatable, consistent, easy. Let me repeat small, repeatable, consistent, easy things to do for a new habit for 100 days. If you want to become a person who reads a lot, read one sentence or one paragraph a day for 100 days, preferably around the same time. If you want to start exercising to be healthier, I want you to start exercising for one freaking minute a day for 100 days, or 30 seconds or three minutes. You choose the minimal possible behavior that you can do to develop the habit. The habit is more important than the intensity at first. You want to reduce all the neurological stress of change. You want to reduce all the neurological processes that are built for you to conserve energy and not develop new habits. So you have to create a new habit loop. And the way you do that is small, repeatable, easy, consistent behaviors for 100 days. Don't worry about anything other than that. If you want to develop a new thought pattern, think in a certain way every day for 100 days and schedule a time. Create your own trigger when you wake up, when you go to sleep, after sex, before the bathroom, before you brush your teeth, whatever it is. If you can just commit to small little behaviors for 100 days, you'll develop the foundation of a new habit where you do the habit and the habit creates you. Does that make sense? Does that make sense? If it makes sense, right? If it makes sense, Give me a like or a love. So the way you create a habit is you do small little activities every day. Stop. One pattern. Stop. Start one new pattern. That's it. No more. You are not allowed to change more than one habit in the next 90 days. However, when you choose a really good habit to release or a really disempowering habit to release, and you choose one small little habit to start now, you have a beautiful exponential rise towards achieving more of your goals and dreams. All right, so there's the drill for you. Every Tuesday morning, I do this. My goal is to help you achieve even more. I don't care how much success you've achieved in your life. Health, wealth, relationships, career, business, we know all the how to today in 2019, we know all the flipping how to. The key is getting you to right and. And in order to get you to take more inspired action, what you have to do is you've got to master your mindset. You've got to master the emotions that drive your behavior or stop your behavior. And yes, you have to do the right things in the right order at the right time. Anything less than that is like trying to open up a safe with all the right numbers, but they're in the wrong order. All right, Hope you enjoyed this. Just so you know, you can follow me on obviously my Facebook fan page, my Instagram. I'm on Instagram a lot now. I do a little tweet every day. Killer new YouTube channel that we're building up. So there's your lesson for the day. Share it if you like. If you don't, I understand that too, but I'd love you to share it. And if you want to go deeper into some of my work and get eight brain training audios for free on how to retrain your brain for more focus, more awareness, less stress. Pick up Inner Size on Amazon. Have an amazing day. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Bye bye for now. Thanks.